[ RadSafe ] sushi platter tells you if your dinner's radioactive

[Lawrence Jacobi]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2052784/The-sushi-platter-tells-dinners-radioactive.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

The Fukushima Plate is tableware with its own built-in safety mechanism.  Underneath the plate is a radiation meter that logs whether your sushi has absorbed too much seaborne radiation from the Fukushima disaster earlier this year.

You set your own preferred levels of radioactivity, then glowing rings round the outside of the plate light up to warn you if your fish is toxic.  If none of the LED circles round the outside of the plate light up, your sushi isn't radioactive at all.  If just one or two rings light up, there is radioactive contamination, but below the level you've specified as dangerous.  If the outer, red LED ring lights up, then you should seriously consider whether you're actually that hungry. 

'The Fukushima Plate is an ordinary kitchen plate with built-in radioactive meter to visualize your food's level of contamination. It might become an indispensable tool of survival in the future,' says its designer,  Nils Ferber.  His design notes for the plate specify that you can remove the radiation meter before putting the plate in the dishwasher.   Ferber's concept design is, he says designed for a world where 'safety is a luxury'. The German designer unveiled the concept plates on his website this year.  'I study design because I believe in its potential to alter reality,' says Ferber. 'By presenting a design concept to someone you always show how things could be.'

After the Fukushima disaster earlier this year, some fish were detected with high levels of radiation off the Japanese coast.  There have been reports of shoppers in Tokyo bringing Geiger counters with them to the grocers - and imported fish became much more popular in the wake of the disaster.  However, Ferber's imagined future, where radiation in food is a widespread problem, is yet to materialise.